Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection: 400+ Easy Embroidery Designs

I am two weeks into learning how to hand-embroider. I purchased both of Aimee Ray's books along with a couple of the Sublime Stitching books. While I not knocking Sublime Stitching at all, I was more inspired by the whimsical "doodling" projects and patterns from Aimee Ray. I guess for me, it let me think of embroidery as more of a free-handed piece of art rather than following a pattern. The instructional section is brief, but helpful. Personally, I preferred to look up videos of the stitches on-line to better teach myself. The CD is fantastic- it contains all of the motifs as large, scalable .TIFF files. Hooray!!! If you have certain photo-editing software, you can open several designs and arrange them to form a whole little scene. (I'm thinking of turning the gnome & mushroom pages into a table runner!) Her designs are adorable. I can picture them on everything from napkins to clothing. I agree with another poster that a book of seasonal designs would be great! As a beginning embroiderer, I would definitely recommend both of Aimee Ray's books be added to your library!

Love this book! I have been waiting for a book like this to come out for a while ... a book that has lots of little motifs in it that are perfect for embellishing projects. And that is exactly what this book is .. a book filled with 400+ different motifs that you can use to make your projects. Also included are 17 different projects using the motifs. The motifs come on a CD-ROM --- I have not tried out the CD-ROM yet, but I am looking forward to trying it out, and hoping that it will allow me to resize the patterns any way I see fit. In addition to the projects, this book contains a how-to section that is an expanded version of the how-to section from her first book. The rest of the book has lots of fun pictures and line colored drawings of each motif. Each motif is numbered (I am assuming for reference) -- there are 450 motifs altogether, but keep in mind that the first 52 are letters (an upper case, and a lower case alphabet). The motifs are divided up in the book by category. The categories included are: alphabet, asian chic, baby, celebrations, circus, embellishments, farm anials, flowers, food, fruits & veggies, garden time, space, sweet shoppe, trees & leaves, under the sea, weather, winged wonders, woodland animals, woodland fairytale. I really love all of the motifs and Aimee's wonderfully whimsical style! The only thing that is "missing" from this book would be a holiday category .....I would love to see another book, just like this one (also done by Aimee) devoted solely to holiday motifs. Maybe it could be called "Doodle Stitching: The Holiday Motif Collection" ... just a little hint to the publishers/author ... :) Very well done, a must for your embroidery library!

I bought this book looking for cute, fun patterns and that's what I got. There are tons of motifs in several categories that would be easy to combine to make your own patterns. I don't have image editing software on my current computer so I didn't find the included CD that helpful but it does enlarge the images which would make them easier to trace and transfer by hand. I bought the Sublime Stitching book as well and it does not compare - the so called motifs in that book are one step above stick figure drawings. Doodle Stitching has several project ideas that can help get your creative juices flowing. Sublime Stitching has no project ideas and very few pictures. I also like how Aimee Ray includes the motifs in color which is helpful for beginners who want extra guidance when choosing colors. Overall a great book for beginners, I have already recommended it to several friends!

I bought this book after comparing Amiee Ray's two available embroidery books and I'm glad that so many customers commented about the fact that the original Doodle Stitching book was more inspirational and less workbook. This book is a great companion - or a standalone - if you like Ray's style (which I do :D) The motifs are blessedly simple, consistent with her style, versatile, and the accompanying CD is such a bonus. Being able to resize and combine the motifs with ease really is what sells this book and I wish many other motif books would follow suit (or be printed in a spiral bound book). I would recommend this for any embroidery lover who was looking to get some stitching done with ease and enjoyment. New to the craft? TAKE NOTE: This books is just motifs and includes little to no instruction on the art of hand embroidery. If you're not familiar with embroidery stitches, you'll need a bit of help to use the motifs. I didn't find this an issue (actually a plus, I hate to flip through HALF a book to get to the stuff that's relevant to me), but newbies may.

This is my third book on contemporary embroidery. I really enjoy the format of the book, the simple tutorials on different stitches (with colored floss, which is much nicer than hand drawn diagrams), and the cute variety of doodles. The idea of including a disc with the templates for all the doodles is fantastic! They are organized into convenient categories such as Asian chic, flowers, woodland creatures, and more. The only reason for the 4 star review is the ease of use for the digital templates. They are very large files with NO TRANSPARENCY!!! So even if you scale each layer down using a photo editing program, there is no way to overlap or combine templates without them blanking out the adjacent image. Luckily I am pretty handy with photo editing and have changed most of the templates I like to have transparency in PNG format so I can combine them and move them around as I like. Some images burn out or have very faint lines if they are reduced too small, so I work on a large background to try avoiding that. SO if it weren't for the technical frustrations, this book would have gotten 5 plus stars from me! I hope the author reads some reviews and continues making changes with each excellent book she releases. I'm looking forward to the next collection of motifs!

The book is FULL of little motifs that you can very easily stitch onto whatever you like, along with some helpful hints on how to do so. They have heaps of different themes from ocean to chinese, baby, beach, holiday, sweets, cakes, animals, butterflies, trees, swirls...lots and LOTS of good stuff. The designs are cute but simple and so someone like me (with limited sewing or stitching experience) can quickly pick it up with no troubles. This book would make a great gift for anyone who was interested in crafty things too.

I love this book! I've embroidered for over 60 years and have some favorite patterns, but with more time on my hands now I needed more of a variety for quick projects to do up for our 5 grandchildren. When I saw the samples of the designs and 400 of them, I said that's the book. My 12 yr. old granddaughter has begun to embroider and needs easy projects so it's just right for her too. The CD that comes with it is perfect to print out and enlarge the designs. It's very unfortunate that so many young girls (and older ones) don't know how to do this beautiful, artistic and relaxing hobby in this modern age. With this book there's no excuse.....yes, I highly recommend the book Doodle Stitching.

I am not a fan of embroidery normally, but I flipped through this book in a store and just had to have it! There aren't a whole lot of projects, but the ones that are there are great! They're fun, adorable, and the instructions are super clear. I haven't tried putting together the motifs yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it out! They're cute enough that it's worth any effort it might take. My favorite sections are the woodland animals and the woodland fairytale. They're adorable, and are great for a woodland themed nursery (which is what I started looking at them for), and there's even a project that would make a great gift with that theme.

Aimee Ray zeigt auch in ihrem zweiten Werk die schöne Welt der Stickerei. Ich habe beide Bänder (der erste Band: Doodle Stitching - Fresh & Embroidery for Beginners) und finde beide Werke absolut lohnenswert. Im ersten Teil des Buches werden Handwerkszeug, Stiche und Möglichkeiten erklärt, die Vorlagen zu übertragen. Diese sind sehr einfach erklärt und sehr gut zu verstehen. Im Weiteren zeigt Aimee Ray Stickprojekte wie Babystrampler, Windstopper etc. Im letzten Teil dann die ganze Pracht der entwickelten Vorlagen. Die einzelnen Vorlagen sind in Kategorien unterteilt (Tiere, Alphabet, Ornamente, asiatisch, Fabelwesen.....). Das besonders tolle ist die beigefügte CD. Auf ihr sind alle Vorlagen abgespeichert und man kann sie sich auf ein beliebiges Format vergrössern oder verkleinern. Das englisch ist einfach zu verstehen, wenn man einige Basicausdrücke kennt (floss, thimble, embroidery hoop) - aber nichts, was nicht machbar wäre. Ich persönlich hatte als Vorkenntnisse nur ein paar Basic-Stiche (Kreuzstich, Rückstich)und bin mit diesem Werk absolut klar gekommen. Im Gegenteil: die Beschreibungen im zweiten Band fand ich so nachvollziehbar, dass mir der zweite Band durch die vielen Vorlagen, fast noch besser gefallen hat.

Molto bello, edizione perfetta, però i motivi per i bebè sono pochi.

Love love love

Un libro genial para introducirse en el mundo del bordado. El diseño es espectacular, y para mi gusto, uno de los mejores del mercado. Además trae un montón de plantillas.

I bought her first book and I got this one to inspire me further. I love the style of the drawings and the colours. A lot of them look really cute. I particularly like the ones of nature. I would like a further motif book on transport ie cars, bicycles, planes, helicopters, etc and technology ie computers, lawnmowers, mobile phones, office ie working environment as many designed for children in mind. And religious motifs would be good ie christian, buddhist, hindu etc to bring more culturally diverse projects.Another motif chapter on sports would be good. A brilliant book, even if we don't get another motif book, the book gives an idea of how to do them. I have been showing lots of people this book and they love it. Update. I am now working through the stitches and can now do stem stitch which is simple quick and attractive. Did try to do the French Knot one but gave up and ended up looking on Youtube. I take this book during work.. when it gets boring and quiet and the beautiful stitching makes my enjoy my day more. When I finish work, I feel more inspired, as my creativity is suppressed at work.